next »

[DanDanger]

I have started a blog, yes I have indeedy. I've been working with mobile phone operating System "Symbian", and have had such a bad time with it, I just had to warm all other programmers about THE HELL THAT IS SYMBAIN 

http://symbianhell.blogspot.com/

[ravuya]

Beats the shit out of MIDP 1.0 on a T610, though.

It's like Java, except you have to look over your shoulder for performance issues, and there's no particular guarantee of a feature being supported, and no way to detect if that particular feature is indeed supported.

The open-source community really needs to hurry it up and whack some of these cellphone SDK developers.

[Impossible]

The joys of mobile device programming. I've been working with Symbian on and off for almost 2 years now. Good luck with your Symbian adventures, you'll need it.  I'm sure you get through it eventually.

[DanDanger]

Ooo, what sort of stuff you been doing on symbian? I'm writing games (www.cobramobile.com) and have been hurting REAL bad from symbian blues.

At the moment i'm writting a software 3d renderer, it took me about 2 weeks to figure out how to launch an EXE so I can use global variables rather than a DLL.

Any tips you want to share would be most appreciated ^_^

 

ooo, and ravuya, i've done quite a bit of the old java games on mobile and even though java on mobile is a complete abomination, it is still waaaay better than the symbian stuff, which is just...EVIL!

[the2bears]

I feel your pain, writing for mobile is indeed an exercise in frustration.  I did the networking and some games for a mobile multiplayer platform for a few years, still wake up with a cold sweat 

Bill

[Impossible]

I'm not working on games, but I've worked (and am still working on) a variety of mobile applications for Symbian for my day job. Currently I'm working on Symbian 9 devices (UIQ3 and Nokia series 60) and many of the quirks and restrictions seem to be improved.  Working on UIQ2 apps sucked.  The painful thing about writing a 3D software renderer for any of these devices is dealing with all the fixed point math.  Do you have a decent fixed point library or are you writing that yourself also?

[DanDanger]

I wrote a whole bunch of fixed point maths stuff, including matrix and vector classes. I couldn't find a fixed point library that I liked the look of, do you recommend one?

I rewrote some of the fixed point maths stuff (matrix multiplies and such) using the inline assembler and I actually doubled my frame rate, and that is not a glib exaggeration. This was a bit of an eye opener as I thought "modern compilers" were "far more efficient than writing in assembler", or so I keep reading on the web.

It did take me about a week to figure out how to use the inline assembler as there is NO DOCUMENTATION WHATSOEVER available for it on any of the Symbian/Nokia sites. It came down to a mater of trial and error: write a line in ASM, see if it compiles, write another line, etc..